-----Original Message-----
From: Socialist/Radical Geography [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Yvonne Liu
Sent: 18 February 2006 15:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: Call for papers: "maps and social transformation",

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Kirsten Forkert" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: February 18, 2006 9:56:09 AM EST
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Call for papers: "maps and social transformation",
>
> Hi drifters,
>
> thought you might be interested in the following. Hope everyone is  
> well.
>
> Kirsten
>
> http://www.euromovements.info/english/news3.htm
>
> Proposal Newsletter:
>
> Euromovements: european action research network, has been working
> since 2004 on the development of activist research around
> systematization of information merging for and from social movements
> in Europe.
> Euromovements is a translocal informal network focused on creating a
> space of convergence to debate, exchange and share about political and
> research practices.
> Euromovements proposes you to participate in a compilation of online
> material about < maps and social transformation >. We would like to
> give an overview of the panorama of actions, experiences,
> methodologies and groups that are working on creating and developing,
> maps for/from social transformation, meaning tools and knowledge to
> empower actors and groups acting towards social and political action
> against Empire.
>
> The format of the contents >
>
> It would be highly important to try to give a similar importance to
> written knowledge as to visual or audio knowledge. That is why we
> would like your proposals to be combined in several forms: text/
> images /animations/ maps/videos/acoustic maps, etc.
> For e.j. if you have done a map, or a graph of data, please send it
> with and explanation (video, text) so we can better understand how to
> read it, and about the methodology, aims and goals of your project. If
> you have done an article about visualisations, maps or cartographies,
> please send it with some images of the maps you did work on it.
>
> This newsletter will be in several languages. We won't assure
> translation tasks, execpt on voluntary activist base. Please try to
> send your proposals with their existing translation in other
> languages, or with a little synopsis in another language if there
> isn't any translation already available.
>
> The contents of those newsletters were registered under
> copyleft/creative commons, there hasn't been any commercial use of
> them. This newsletter will follow the same characteristics. It will be
> widely spread abroad several emails lists, webpages and other networks
> of exchange and conversation.
>
> Contents >
>
> We propose some general questions to help to start those exchanges.
>
>> The roots of maps and social transformation:
>
> How are our desires and needs related to social transformation, are
> depending of communicating, making visible, our struggles,
> resistances, knowledge produced among those experiences? How those
> needs are linked to the production of methodologies and tools to
> visualize, clarify the challenges, the networks, the intangibles
> phenomenoms behind mobilizations?.
>
> What are the links between contemporanous political praxis of mapping
> and its roots? How dadaism, art brut, cut-up method, derive, are
> connected with mapping as social transformation? What does those
> groups, methods and concepts learn us about new forms of political,
> social and artistic creativity?
>
> The evolution of mapping and social transformation must also be put in
> perspective with its most recent past. Cyberactivists , hackers,
> cyberpunks, can be also considered as impulsors of maps/visuals and
> social transformation. The field of action related to digital tools,
> and so called cyberspace, is full of ideas, reflections and researches
> towards the construction of tools to map its diversity, its flux, its
> rhytms.
>
>> Mapping the movements Vs Mapping the biopower:
>
> Technopolitical tools and social transformation constitutes an
> interesting interaction domain. Some of us are calling for the
> production of < anti-technologies of resistance1 >, arguing for
> methods that can't be replicate elsewhere, so evanescent that they
> can't be produced with a guideline to understand it. The exercice of
> mapping is always under the danger of capturing something it wants to
> be free. How groups producing maps, analysing and/or producing
> technopolitical tools to systematize large amount of data deal with
> those questions. Which are the ethical and philosophical challenges
> and limits about mapping social transformation, social movements and
> networks activities?, how to reverse control surveillance engineering,
> how to challenge the pancapitalism, through mechanisms ,as Brian
> Holmes call them, < grass roots top down surveillance systems >. What
> is the role of technology and software programation inside the
> development of this activist research field? We do also get the
> sensation that maps/visualization field of action is highly
> competitive, and is fulfilled with private actors and entreprises, how
> do actors and groups from social movements and hacklabs challenge
> this?
>
> Other groups are working in mapping the "enemy". Their activist
> research focuses towards the identification of the networks acting and
> supporting actively neoliberalist policies and dynamics. Those last
> years seems to have seen a huge increasing of didactic maps (under
> digital or printed form) to make available to people information about
> who is ruling, where, how and in which bases. There has been a high
> production about ongoing subjects of activist research such as
> biotechnologies, biopower, neoliberalism, actors of the so called new
> society of information, Enron practices, the war on Irak, and the list
> is much more longer.
>
>> Methodologies, ways of doing it
>
> We wonder about the several methodologies to develop those maps, as
> individuals or as groups creations. As pieces of activist social
> communication, what are their repercussions? Are they creating new
> forms of mediatical interferences inside the mass mediascape? Are they
> able to help in the appropriation of information to be turned in
> collective action? Are maps/visuals a subject for specialists and
> experts? Even if it is obvious that there are real difficulties to
> develop, program, read and analyse maps, in which ways do people and
> groups involved in making maps do try to avoid those problematics?
> Those last questions raises also the cartographic methodologies to
> work with diverse variety of publics on social and political
> thematics. Developing maps and cartographies can also mean to develop
> collective methodologies of empowerment. Maps can mean insertion,
> immersion, exchange, conversations, several levels of sociabilities,
> the rize of geopoetic tools, intimate maps, to be produced by kids,
> young ones, immigrants, women, communities of neighbours etc. How to
> develop in group collective tactical maps? where is the border between
> individual artitivism work?, where are the technical possibilities to
> develop descentralized maps from several groups perspectives etc?
> If you have organized any workshop, meeting, experience, off set,
> installation around those subjects, could you detailed how was the
> process, the background, the persons involved, the outcomes etc.
>
>> Methodology and calendar of the newsletter:
>
> To send us your articles and other material's proposal for this
> newsletter please send us an email at: [log in to unmask]
>
> We do propose also an elist to help with exchanges around those
> thematics, you can subscribe here directely, or send a message with
> subscribe in the subject at: [log in to unmask]
> VISUAL is a mailing list for researchers, activists, hackers and
> artists who experiment applying visualization and cartographic
> techniques to social transformation. Subscribers are encouraged to
> post information about visual experiences, conferences, announcements,
> queries, open debates, calls for proposals, develop maps and to
> exchange information on news relevant to
> visualization and cartography experimenting. To facilitate the
> trans-local-national understanding, the e-list is multilingual. If it
> is possible, please, try to send e-mails translated intwo (or more)
> languages.
>
> Deadline for sending: 15 march
> We will entable contact with every contributor when the newsletter
> will be online.



--
http://yvonneliu.org
vox: 646.321.5710
aim/skype: whyloo

"The philosophers have already interpreted the world, in various  
ways; the point is to change it." -- Karl Marx, 1845, Theses On  
Feuerbach

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